


Reclamation Day

by LegendaryBard



Category: Fallout 76, Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Crossover, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 14:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16389053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LegendaryBard/pseuds/LegendaryBard
Summary: Gabriel and Jack wake up on Reclamation Day, and they've got to leave the Vault.





	Reclamation Day

“Ungh.” 

Gabriel’s head feels thick and fuzzy, clouded with a vague kind of pain. His mouth is cottony and dry, and the rest of him feels warm and heavy. 

He cracks open an eye. The heaviness weighing on him, while it does feel like a “I don’t want to get out of bed” drowsiness, also feels as though it comes from a second party. 

Jack snores peacefully, laying partially on top of and beside Gabriel. He’s the source of the warm weight- he’s like a furnace, trapping the heat between them. One of his arms wraps around Gabriel’s chest, his face buried comfortably into Gabriel’s neck, with his breath tickling Gabriel’s skin. There’s a party hat on Jack’s head, askew, and Gabriel is struck with the childish urge to bat it off. 

He doesn’t, though. Instead, Gabriel blearily looks around, and like he does after all binge drinking, expects to see their bedroom in LA; but the little picket fenced slice of suburbia he knew is gone. Twenty-five years gone, destroyed in nuclear fire, and his surroundings are instead their room in the vault. 

You’d think he’d get used to it after this long, but Gabriel still expects their master bedroom, with its silken curtains and their cat, Reaper, and their dog, Soldier, curled up on the pillow or at the foot of the bed. Instead, he’s on their vault room’s couch, which is too small for he and Jack to lie together properly. He casts his gaze towards the bed and wonders why they hadn’t slept there, when it was only ten feet away, and much better for cuddling. His neck’s going to be stiff all day. 

Day. Day.

_ That’s right.  _

It’s Reclamation Day. He had almost forgotten. A spike of anxiety shoots through him, and he realizes he’s not going to be able to hunker down and sleep for much longer. They have to get out of the vault, into Appalachia, and rebuild society.

Despite having a quarter of a century to come to terms with it, Gabriel views the monumental task set before them with some apprehension. Appalachia was foreign to Gabriel, who grew up in Los Angeles, and less foreign to Jack, who was from Indiana and had family who lived in West Virginia. But Gabriel doubted that knowing the place would do much more than upset him- they had no idea what kind of fate awaited the land out there, or what had happened to the people, or the buildings. Gabriel could only hope that Jack would not be too distraught about the fate of towns he had visited as a child. Or, Gabriel realizes with an uneasy jolt, distraught over finding whatever was left of his  _ family,  _ which hadn’t been able to get into a vault and had presumably died in a fiery ball of split atoms and death. 

Gabriel was lucky. His family had been able to get into Vault 17, where they were presumably safe, still alive- twenty-five years would’ve probably killed his elderly father, maybe his mother, but he could hope. His siblings were still alive and well, no doubt, they were all young and hardy, but poor Jack-

“Mrghghghg,” Jack murmurs into Gabriel’s skin. “Oh, my head.” 

Gabriel brings up his hand to cradle the back of Jack’s head, thumb affectionately rubbing little circles just beneath his jaw. “Good morning,  _ mi sol.”  _

“Nothing good about it,” He responds, whuffing into Gabriel’s neck. “Ughh. It’s Reclamation Day, isn’t it?” 

Gabriel’s heart uncomfortably squeezes. “Yeah,” He says, quietly, and lifts his hand up to stroke the short crop of Jack’s thinning hair. He pulls off the party hat, which Jack doesn’t object to, and drops it on the ground. No need to keep their room clean anymore. They won’t be coming back. It doesn’t matter whether things are tidy. 

“You scared?” Jack murmurs. 

Little machismo competitions with Jack mellowed out somewhere back in Gabriel’s forties. He gives the truth. “Worried,” He says, honestly. “I don’t want to leave. I don’t know what we’re going to find out there. I don’t know  _ why-  _ we have to go.” 

“Because we’re the best,” Jack says, fuzzily. “And nobody else is going to rebuild for us.” 

“Do we really  _ need  _ to?” 

“I’d like to stay here too,” Jack says, interpreting his words, “But we can’t. Not because we’ve got some glorious responsibility, but because the power and air supply is going to shut off in twenty-four hours and I’d rather go out there than suffocate in here.” 

Gabriel laughs. 

“We’d better get ready, then.” Gabriel says, voice syrupy and fond. The hand not stroking Jack’s hair pats his butt, and Jack slowly rises, bones crackling.

“Oogh,” Jack winces. “Shouldn’t have slept on the couch. Shouldn’t have slept on the couch. Owww.” 

“You’ll live,” Gabriel says, voice light. Jack stands on his own two legs, stretching for the sky, and his spine makes an affronted noise. 

“Oof,” Gabriel looks sympathetic.

“That one didn’t hurt,” Jack assures. “Feels better.” 

Gabriel reluctantly sits up, and stands. “If you want the first shower, I’ll see if I can scrounge anything for breakfast.” 

“God, make as many of those Yum-Yum eggs as we have,” Jack says. “No sense in wasting rations if we’re just gonna leave them behind.” 

“On it.”

He heads to their little kitchenette, digging around for Sugar Bombs and deviled eggs. While he pours himself and Jack a bowl, the shower begins rushing in the background. An absurd rush of fondness makes him smile down at the bomb-shaped breakfast flakes. 

The vault ran out of powdered milk a few years ago, so the dwellers have taken to eating the cereal dry, served on the side with a Nuka-Cola or water. Gabriel plunks a Nuka-Cherry that he’d stolen from one of the residents’ not-so-secret stash- Cherry is Jack’s favorite, though he hasn’t had the opportunity to drink one in quite a while- down beside Jack’s bowl. 

Gabriel grimaces as he opens a box of Yum-Yum Deviled Eggs. They’re… 25-year-old dried eggs. Gabriel has no idea why Jack likes them, and the older they get, the more worried Gabriel is that they’re going to kill him. 

They don’t have a kitchen table, so Gabriel puts all of it on the coffee table and starts eating. He wants to eat his last meal in the vault with Jack, but he gets a sense that the Overseer will want them to leave as soon as possible, and that means no dallying. 

He eats dry spoonfuls of cereal and tries to not think about what’s going to happen once they leave. He still has very fuzzy pictures in his mind of the fall trees in late October, and he dreads what it’ll look like. What’ll be  _ out  _ there? What’ll be  _ left? _

He worries, momentarily, that he’s too old. It’s been twenty-five years in the vault. He’s not youthful and strong and in his prime anymore. He knows how to handle a gun, knows rudimentary survival techniques ( they were drilled for years ) but his reflexes have slowed and  _ God  _ knows what’s out there now.

He’ll spend the rest of his life with Jack, either way. That grim, but ultimately comforting, thought in mind, he keeps himself together while he eats. Eventually, he clinks his spoon against the bottom of the empty bowl. Gabriel picks it up and takes it to the dishwasher- he doesn’t know why, but he puts it in there, preparing to do dishes that he won’t ever do- and places a hand down, solidly, on the countertop.

There’s a tide of bile rising in his throat, and he suppresses it. He will be fine. He’ll be with Jack. It doesn’t matter that he’s not at his peak anymore. 

He doesn’t want to leave the cozy confines of the vault, but he _also_ didn’t want to leave his childhood home when he went to college, and didn’t want to leave the home he and Jack had made when he went to Anchorage. This is just another phase of life. Fifty isn’t so old. Not old at all. 

Jack leaves the shower, already in a fresh vault suit, tousling his hair with a towel. Out of habit, he drops it in their hamper. Gabriel notices. Pays more attention than he ought. His brain tells him that  _ they won’t be coming back, it doesn’t matter, Jack could throw the towel anywhere and it doesn’t matter, nothing matters,  _ and in that way, a surge of giddiness leaps over his fright-induced depression. 

“On the table,” Gabriel says. “Got’cha a Nuka-Cherry.” 

“From where?” Jack gasps, head turning, and Gabriel closes the bathroom door with a grin on his face.

He realizes, while he’s scrubbing himself down in the shower, this may be the last time he feels hot water on his skin. The last time he gets to bathe. 

The feeling of loss wars in his mind, trying to get ahead of his newfound feeling of liberty, and he tries to just concentrate on the water pelting his skin.

He steps out once he’s clean, dries off, and puts on his suit. He brushes his teeth, inspects the peachy fuzz of his hair, trims his beard, and stares at himself in the mirror for a little longer than he should. 

He’s ready. 

And on schedule, the Overseer begins chiming on the intercom.

“Today is Reclamation Day.” 

Gabriel drops down besides Jack on the couch and kisses his cheek, throwing his arm over his shoulder. Jack idly returns it, concentrating on his cereal.

“I love you,” Gabriel says, seriously. That gets Jack away from the Sugar Bombs. 

“I love you too,” Jack’s a little muffled, trying to keep crumbs from spilling out. He puts his hand over his mouth. “We’re gonna do fine, Gabe. We’re gonna make it through this. I swear.” He swallows a mouthful of dry flakes. 

Gabriel sighs. He momentarily lays his head on Jack’s shoulder, then gets up, heading towards the door. Jack downs the last of his Nuka-Cherry, and throws it in the trash, then puts his dishes in the dishwasher while Gabriel anxiously stands by the door.

He almost says,  _ you don’t have to do that, no one will know. No one’s ever coming back here. You can just leave it out,  _ but he doesn’t. He watches Jack do their daily routine and feels his heart starting to pound. This is happening. They have to go out into Appalachia and save the world. 

Jack’s already fiddling with the straps on his Pip-Boy 2000, and Gabriel hesitantly takes his own from its case. Jack glances back at him, his grin lopsided. 

“Come on, Gabe,” he says. “We have to go save America.” 

Jack had said the same thing, nearly three decades ago, in Anchorage, Alaska. He was older- they were both older- but the impish grin on his face, the sparkle in his eyes, were timeless. 

“Again,” Gabriel says, with a dramatic sigh. “We’d better get a medal for this.” 

“Well, if it’s anything like last time…” Jack lets the words hang, and the hydraulic door slides open with a loud hiss of pistons. 

They join the rest of the residents, shuffling through the confetti-sprinkled steel corridors in a kind of daze, accepting supplies as the Mr. Handys give them out. There’s some nervous, sparse conversation, but everyone’s mostly quiet, absorbing the last sights they’ll see of their home and trying to commit the instructions to memory. 

Jack finds Gabriel’s hand, for comfort; it looks as though Gabriel’s not the only one nervous about what awaits them. 

They stand before the great vault door, the first pair to leave, and shield their eyes when it slides open.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very excited for Fallout: 76 and what better day to release than October 23rd?
> 
> I did some art way back in July with this very same concept, and while I can't find it right now, it's the inspo for this little thing. 
> 
> Also, I apologize for any grammatical or structural errors, I didn't proofread. I just wrote it and plopped it in.


End file.
